29 March 2013

A federal judge has denied a request by ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to be released on bond while he awaits sentencing. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds [cited] Kilpatrick’s criminal record and history of problems adhering to parole conditions.
A federal jury on March 11 found Kilpatrick and his friend Bobby
Ferguson guilty on multiple counts, including racketeering conspiracy.

The former mayor could face up to 20 years in prison for the racketeering, conspiracy, bribery and tax fraud convictions. Kilpatrick's corruption trial "exposed a brazen pay-to-play culture during his years in office, while
the distressed city lost jobs and people and veered toward insolvency," noted the Associated Press.

The State of Michigan took over Detroit's government in early March. It is now headed by an emergency city manager appointed by the Republican governor to address the city's financial troubles "including $14.9 billion in long-term debt and pension obligations," reports The Atlantic.

The former mayor's legal woes undoubtedly helped end the career of his mother, one of the biggest names in Detroit politics and one of the LGBT community's strongest supporters on Capitol Hill. Democratic Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick lost her bid for an eighth term in August 2010. Kilpatrick’s mother "offered her Detroit home as collateral to ensure her son shows up to
court for sentencing," added the Associated Press. Judge Edmunds still denied bond.

In November 2009, Charles Pugh made history when he was elected Detroit's first-ever openly gay city councilman and the city council president. Pugh became one of the highest profile Black gay men to be elected to office in the nation.

12 March 2013

Jurors in a city buffeted by financial crisis convicted former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on corruption charges Monday, capping a five-month trial that exposed a brazen pay-to-play culture during his years in office while the distressed city lost jobs and people and veered toward insolvency.

Kilpatrick [was convicted of] two dozen convictions, from racketeering conspiracy to bribery to tax crimes. Once hailed as a hip, young big-city leader, he was portrayed at trial as an unscrupulous politician who took kickbacks, rigged contracts and lived far beyond his means.

Kilpatrick was "denied bond and ordered to go to prison [to] await sentencing," adds Detroit's NBC 4. "The former mayor could face up to 20 years in prison for the two racketeering convictions alone."

During his scandal-plagued administration, Kilpatrick infamously campaigned for a same-sex marriage ban in Michigan. The former mayor said that he didn't "support equal rights for gays because marriage should be a sacred institution between 'a man and a woman.' "

The anti-gay mayor was later outed as a serial adulterer. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff faced multiple felonies after "tens of thousands of text messages" surfaced, including many sexually explicit ones, that revealed they were having an affair and attempting to payoff witnesses with city funds. This was Kilpatrick's second publicized extramarital affair.

10 May 2012

More problems for Detroit's anti-gay former Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick, who recently was released from prison after serving 14 months for obstruction of justice after his efforts to conceal a sex scandal. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Kilpatrick and a longtime friend with accepting lavish gifts, and private plane travel in an influence-peddling scheme involving pension funds, reports The Detroit Free Press.

The agency accused Kilpatrick and Jeffrey Beasley, both [trustees of the Detroit Police and Fire Fund], of accepting $125,000 worth of gifts—including private jet travel, golf outings, massages and concert tickets—from an investment adviser to the city's pension funds in exchange for preferential treatment. The adviser, MayfieldGentry Realty Advisers, had recommended the pension funds invest $117 million in a real estate investment, records state. The deal went through, but the travel and other perks to Kilpatrick and Beasley were kept secret.

The SEC now wants Kilpatrick and Beasley—both already facing separate criminal charges in federal court—to give back the dollar value of their alleged ill-gotten gains and pay an unspecified amount in civil fines. Charges by the SEC are not criminal and do not carry the possibility of prison time.

The investment advisers also gave "$50,000 in donations to the former mayor's charity, the Kilpatrick Civic Fund. The firm chartered private flights to Bermuda, Las Vegas and Florida for Kilpatrick, according to federal court records," adds The Detroit News.

During his scandal-plagued administration, Kilpatrick infamously campaigned for a same-sex marriage ban in Michigan, saying that he didn't "support equal rights for gays because marriage should be a sacred institution between 'a man and a woman.' "

The anti-gay mayor was later outed as a serial adulterer. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff faced multiple felonies after tens of thousands of text messages surfaced, including many sexually explicit ones, that revealed they were having an affair and attempting to payoff witnesses with city funds. This was Kilpatrick's second publicized extramarital affair.

Kilpatrick's legal problems are only just beginning. Kilpatrick is facing a 38-count federal indictment "that accuses the former mayor and his circle of rigging contracts, collecting millions of dollars in bribes and defrauding taxpayers." The trial is expected to begin in September.

Mr. Kilpatrick smiled broadly as he left the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson, Mich., where throngs of local journalists had waited since the early morning. The Detroit Free Press live blogged the release and posted a video.

A 6-foot-4 former college football player once known as Detroit’s “hip-hop mayor,” Mr. Kilpatrick was elected to run the city when he was 31 years old. He left office seven years later in 2008 under a dark cloud of corruption after text messages revealed the affair, with his chief of staff, and an $8.5 million settlement with police officers, whom he fired to prevent the affair from being revealed.

[Kilpatrick was in] jail since May 2010, when a judge found he had mislead authorities and did not turn over certain assets toward his $1 million restitution to Detroit.

The anti-gay mayor was later outed as a serial adulterer. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff faced multiple felonies after tens of thousands of text messages surfaced, including many sexually explicit ones, that revealed they were having an affair and attempting to payoff witnesses with city funds. This was Kilpatrick's second publicized extramarital affair.

Kiwame Kilpatrick's legal problems are only just beginning. Kilpatrick is facing a 38-count federal indictment "that accuses the former mayor and his circle of rigging contracts, collecting millions of dollars in bribes and defrauding taxpayers."

Kilpatrick lost in a landslide to State Sen. Hansen Clarke, 41 percent to 47 percent, reports the Detroit Free Press, which describes the challengers' victory as "stunning."

State Sen. Hansen Clarke, the Democratic nominee and likely winner in November, also boasts a strong record on LGBT issues. Clarke co-sponsored legislation to expand Michigan’s hate crime law to include sexual orientation. Clarke has been an outspoken advocate on HIV funding and policy. The state senator was among the first elected officials in Michigan to condemn the recent bio-terrorism charge slapped against an HIV positive black gay man accused of biting a neighbor.

25 May 2010

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick, who resigned and plead guilty to obstruction of justice in 2008, was sentenced Tuesday to up to five years for violating his probation. "The sentence was harsher than expected, elicited loud gasps in
courtroom," reports The New York Times.

Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner rejected a lengthy, emotional
plea for lenience by Mr. Kilpatrick, and criticized the former mayor for
lying, attempting to portray himself as a victim and ultimately failing
the residents of Detroit. In April, the judge determined that Mr. Kilpatrick had violated his
probation by hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, in hopes
of keeping the assets from being used to pay the $1 million in
restitution he was ordered to pay to the city of Detroit. At one point,
Mr. Kilpatrick had argued that he could only afford $6 a month to the
beleaguered city, even though he had moved his family into a luxurious
home in a wealthy community near Dallas. As a result of his 'contemptible behavior,' Mr. Kilpatrick must spend
between 18 months and five years behind bars, the judge said Tuesday.

The anti-gay and ethically-challenged mayor was later outed as a serial adulterer. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff faced multiple felonies after tens of thousands of text messages surfaced, including many sexually explicit ones, that revealed they were having an affair and attempting to payoff witnesses with city funds. This was Kilpatrick's second
publicized extramarital affair.

A poll of 300 voters each in Kilpatrick's and Conyers' congressional districts shows that only 27% of the people polled would vote for Kilpatrick. Conyers' numbers are stronger with 40% of the people polled saying they would vote for him. But only 34% of voters in Kilpatrick's district and just 22% in Conyers' district say the problems of their son and wife, respectively, affect their opinions of the two Congress members.

24 March 2008

Another week, another high profile politician implicated in a sex scandal. Kwame Kilpatrick, the anti-gay, ethically-challenged and serial adulterer mayor of Detroit, and, his former chief of staff face now multiple felonies, including perjury, obstruction of justice and official misconduct charges, arising from a sex scandal and his dismissal of a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city. Kwame Kilpatrick is a DNC superdelegate leaning toward Barack Obama.

Despite sworn testimony to the contrary, tens of thousands of text messages, including many sexually explicit ones, surfaced that showed Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty were involved in an affair. Kilpatrick agreed to settle the police lawsuit "at a cost of more than $9 million to the city after learning that the lawyer for the police officers suing had copies of the text messages he had exchanged with Beatty ... Lawyers for Kilpatrick and the plaintiffs then arranged to keep the messages confidential, a detail not disclosed to the City Council when the settlement was approved."

The Detroit City Council has asked for Kilpatrick's resignation and he has refused, channeling Clarence Thomas to criticize his prosecution as a "lynching." Just as an fyi, Kilpatrick "doesn't support equal rights for gays because marriage should be a sacred institution between 'a man and a woman.' " Kilpatrick's definition of the sanctity of marriage must be very elastic because this is his second publicized extramarital affair